A while back, there were some posts on OS dealing with the N-word and its continued use. I think it goes without saying that even if blacks are comfortable using that word among themselves, it has enough negativity associated with it such that its use should probably be discontinued.

After reading some of those posts, just for the hell of it, I decided to google Nigger.com. I really did not know what to expect, but I figured some white hate group had built a defamatory web site around it. Somewhat surprisingly, the search turned up a website under construction note. A "who is" lookup took me a bit aback. The site is registered to the NAACP and Network Solutions indicates its transfer is prohibited.

Actually, it makes sense for the NAACP to just want to "park" the domain to keep a hate group from getting it. Another thought I had though is that the NAACP could use that site for educational purposes, such as a history of the word or to explain some lesser known black oppression(s).

So, to help the NAACP out a bit........there appears to be several different origins of the N-word. It is taken from the Latin word Niger or the French word Negre, both meaning black. It's first documented use was 1786.

Some earlier dictionaries note that nigger meant lazy and that slave owners throughout the late 1700's and most of the 1800's used the N-word in a derogatory manner.  Abolishthenword.com notes that in 1906 Booker T. Washington endorsed the term Negro for use in describing blacks, but as we know, the N-word is still with us.

Some additional lesser known history that might prove useful if Nigger.com became an educational website deals with the black worker displacement of the Great Depression. Huh? black worker displacement?

Yup. During the Great Depression, if a white man needed a job and a black man had a job, the black man was fired and his job was given to a white man. This resulted in many blacks being unemployed and having to beg for "work for food"  jobs. I can remember my father mentioning that his mother would make extra food and give it to several black men who had families to feed, but who were displaced when they were fired so that a white man could have their jobs. (At that time, my grandparents were barely making it, but still managed to offer some surplus food to those who needed it.)

How widespread was black worker displacement during the Great Depression? It is not exactly known, however, a Russian researcher by the name of Boris Borisov has actually done some pretty good digging into the total number of American deaths during the 10 years of the Great Depression. He examined census data and found that: “According to the US statistics, the US lost not less than 8 million 553 thousand people from 1931 to 1940. Afterwards, population growth indices change twice instantly exactly between 1930-1931: the indices drop and stay on the same level for ten years. There can no explanation to this phenomenon found in the extensive text of the report by the US Department of Commerce “Statistical Abstract of the United States,” the author wrote."

 And

"Analyzing the period of the Great Depression in the USA, the author notes a remarkable similarity with events taking place in the USSR during the 1930s. He even introduced a new term for the USA – defarming – an analogue to dispossession of wealthy farmers in the Soviet Union. “Few people know about five million American farmers (about a million families) whom banks ousted from their lands because of debts. The US government did not provide them with land, work, social aid, pension – nothing,” the article says. "

“Every sixth American farmer was affected by famine. People were forced to leave their homes and go to nowhere without any money and any property. They found themselves in the middle of nowhere enveloped in massive unemployment, famine and gangsterism.”

Also

"At the same time, the US government tried to get rid of redundant foodstuffs, which vendors could not sell. Market rules were observed strictly: unsold goods should always be categorized as redundant and they could not be given away to the poor because it could cause damage to businesses. A variety of methods was used to destroy redundant food. They burnt crops, drowned them in the ocean or plowed 10 million hectares of harvesting fields. “About 6.5 million pigs were killed at that time,” the researcher wrote."

"The consequences of those policies were predictable, the author of the article wrote. “Here is what a child recollected about those years: “We changed our usual food for something for available. We used to eat bush leaves instead of cabbage. We ate frogs too. My mother and my older sister died during a year.” (Jack Griffin).”

"So-called public works introduced by President Roosevelt became a salvation for a huge number of jobless and landless Americans. However, the salvation was only a phantom, Boris Borisov wrote. The works conducted under the aegis of the Public Works Administration and the Civil Works Administration were about building channels, roads or bridges in remote, wild and dangerous territories. Up to 3.3 million people were involved in those works at a time, whereas the total number of people amounted to 8.5 million, not to count prisoners."

“Conditions and death rate at those works are to be studied separately. A member of public works would make $30, and pay $25 of taxes from this amount. So a person could make only $5 for a month of hard work in malarial swamps.”

"The conditions, under which people were working for food, could be compared to Stalin’s GULAG camp."

“The Public Works Administration (PWA) bore a striking resemblance to GULAG. The PWA was chaired by “American Beria,” the Secretary of Interior Affairs, Harold Ickes, who threw about two million people into camps for the unemployed youth,” Borisov wrote. “Harold LeClair Ickes (1874–1952) later interned USA’s ethnic Japanese in concentration camps. The first stage of the operation took only 72 hours (1941-1942)."

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While I am not entirely sure of the accuracy of Borisov's  casualty count, the death figures must certainly be higher than we have been led to believe all these years. (Interestingly, my mother used to refer the WPA[Works Progress Administration] as "We Piddle Around.") I have to wonder how many of those who died were displaced blacks who could find no benevolent whites to feed them.

In attempt to research the true Great Depression deaths, one finds that this leads to another shameful chapter in American history......segregated cemeteries. One of my past sales jobs was in cemetery pre-need sales. I was working in a rural Virginia cemetery at the time and had the opportunity to chat with one of the long time employees there. He mentioned that when they desegregated the cemetery in the 1960's, some whites were so pissed they had their relatives dug up and reinterred elsewhere. (And we go from that to electing a black President of the United States in only a span of forty years or so....at least some progress is being made.) 

Long and the short of it is that I think many more folks died during the Great Depression than we have been led to believe and that many, many more blacks died than we have been told---remember, blacks made up as much as 55% of the population of some southern states. Factoring typical reproduction rates, one must ask where did they go?

As to the Nigger.com site, I do not see why they just do not eliminate the domain name altogether, but if that is not possible, they might as well use it to promote something useful....such as history.

(As an aside, the photo at the top of the post comes from the FDR library and is public domain. It depicts "colored boys attending a WPA household workers training center." Guess the Dems thought it was important to keep the "house boys" during times of economic crisis.)